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Monday, July 4, 2016

The pain for Europe's banks, and especially those in Italy, continues this morning following the latest news surrounding the Italian bank sector.

As a reminder, the Euro Stoxx Banks index was down -0.88% last week and is nearly 19% down from its pre-referendum levels. Italian Banks are at the heart of that weakness with the likes of Unicredit, Intesa, Banco Monte dei Paschi and UBI down -9.78%, -3.44%, -15.79% and -6.11% respectively last week, in the process sending Italian stocks to levels not seen since Draghi's famous "whatever it takes" speech.

That story, however, was denied today when La Repubblica reported that Renzi will respect European Union rules on state aid for banks, an Italian official said on Monday. It remains to be seen he will stick to this commitment especially if the collapse in Italy's banking sector continues. Overnight DB also said that, "while UK politics has dominated headlines for the last few weeks it feels like the health of Italian Banks could well takeover in the near term."

Which brings us to the latest catalyst, namely reports that the ECB has asked perpetually troubled, insolvent and repeatedly bailed out Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world's oldest bank, to draw up a plan for tackling its bad-loan burden, asking the lender to reduce its load of soured debt to 14.6 billion euros ($16.2 billion) in 2018 from 24.2 billion euros at the end of 2015, Italy’s third-biggest bank said in a statement Monday.

As a result, Monte Paschi was halted after tumbling for yet another day to fresh new record lows, while the Italian bank sector tumbled in Milan on Monday amid fresh concerns the country’s lenders are under pressure to raise capital to bolster their finances.